The free world is the new continent in cyberspace that we have built so we can live here in freedom. It's impossible to live in freedom in the old world of cyberspace, where every program has its feudal lord that bullies and mistreats the users. So, to live in freedom we have to build a new continent. Because this is a virtual continent, it has room for everyone, and there are no immigration restrictions. - Richard Stallman -

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

What exactly is a web tracker (also known as a visitor tracker or site tracker), and why do you need one?

The idea behind a web tracker is very simple and has been around for many years. Essentially you place a small piece of code on your website, when someone visits your website, that small piece of code is executed and the visitor's public details (ip address, browser, operating system, referrer, page title and url etc) are analysed and stored for reporting to you later.

The great advantage of web trackers are that they are better at tracking 'real people' as they track browsers NOT server requests. This often means a web tracker will have a significantly lower count than standard log file analysis. But it offers a more realistic figure of the visitors to your website and far more detail. At StatCounter our web tracker is provided in real-time so it's even better still.

A web tracker also records your visitors if they return to the same page twice or more. This does not happen with log files. Your page would be already cached in your browser. No request would be sent to the server. That user activity would go unreported. Thanks to web trackers and their use of a random javascript number - your counter is forced to load each time and your visitor is tracked.

As web trackers only track 'real people', it is not able to tell you when a search engine spider is indexing your website. For information like this you need a good log analyser.

StatCounter.Com can produce far different results to standard log file analysis. This is not surprising as our system is designed to track browsers NOT server requests. This can result in a significantly lower count than standard log file analysis. But it offers a more realistic figure of the visitors to your website and far more detail and it is provided in real-time!

So how do they differ?

A big factor is the placement of the StatCounter tracking code. You can use StatCounter to only track the pages you want by simply placing it on the pages you want to track. Log file analysis will track all server requests by default.

If you have very large, slow loading pages it is recommended to place the tracking code closer to the top of the page instead of the bottom. Or a visitor may exit your page before the page finishes loading and the tracking script will never have been loaded.

Framed websites can cause a big problem for log file analysis resulting in an over-inflated count. When a visitor visits a singe page that could often be recorded as 3 visits - loading the main frame, a side frame and a footer. StatCounter does not have this problem.

Cached pages are another huge problem for log file analysis this time resulting in a very poor undercount of visitors. Often your own local ISP will keep a cache of many websites you visit regularly. This speeds up your use of the web - unfortunately no server request is made to your website when this happens. And your visit will go uncounted. This does not happen with StatCounter with the use of javascript and a random variable each time.

Web Proxies - many users, most noticeably AOL users access the web through a web proxy. Their ip address can change on each request to your website so log file analysis could not accurately count your unique visitors. StatCounter does both - we use a simple cookie and the user's ip address.

Robots - the requests made to your website by robots will be recorded in your log files but it will not be recorded by StatCounter.

Overall StatCounter provides a far more detailed, accurate count and tracking of behavior of the 'real' visitors to your website than standard log file analysis.

Of course the only way to experience our advanced web tracker for yourself is to register right now for your free account